EDIT: People are downvoting this because I equated violating copyrights to stealing, which is odd because US law explicitly defines copyright infringement as stealing property. That's not debatable; it's a simple fact. (A fact that apparently bothers some people, but being bothered by reality is not a basis for disagreement.)
If you price a book above what I'm willing to pay for it, I'm never going to buy it. Ever. If my willingness to pay is "$0", then you can't even argue that the creator has lost revenue if I pirate it. I was never going to buy it - it's too expensive at any price.
You can make the argument that capitalism should exclude me from ever being allowed to read it, because my willingness to pay is below the seller's willingness to sell. Fair enough.
However, it's pretty tough to calculate actual economic damages here - I was never going to buy the book, at any price. And I haven't deprived anyone else of the ability to buy the book. You might say to me: "But you are clearly in the target market - you wanted the book enough to pirate and read it." I disagree - by definition, the target market must consist of people who want the product enough to pay for it.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-11...
Trafficking in copyrighted works constitutes theft, but a private equity firm buying a company with debt, transferring the debt onto the company's balance sheet, allowing it to go into bankruptcy because of enormous debt load, and paying themselves huge bonuses along the way is not theft.
If it weren't for the fact that the U.S. federal code as it exists in June of 2020 is the definitive source of ethical and moral definitions, I would think that maybe something _untoward_ might be going on.
Your philosophical musings are not uninteresting, but they are irrelevant to the fact that freeing slaves legitimately bought is defined as stealing property under US law.
Unless you want to make the argument that a philosophical argument and a legal argument are equivalent (which I would actually be quite interested in seeing).
> Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_(19...
That in fact doesn't work even in the case of actual stealing, otherwise we are forced to conclude that the target market for luxury cars includes teenage kids who hot-wire them and take them for joyrides.
However, there are people who copy without authorization and make money from it. (For instance, Google: they collect money for YouTube Premium subscriptions, in exchange for which they let people watch all sorts of illegally reproduced material without commercial interruptions.)
Now suppose the copyright holder wants $1000 for the book. Nobody is willing to pay. You make copies available for $15. A few people are found who pay you. Are you not stealing that revenue from the copyright holder? Oh, but that copyright holder didn't want the money; or else they could have sold for $15 per copy themselves. You're just getting money that they copyright holder left on the table ...
In the case you describe, there is a demonstrated willingness to pay $15, so you have enough information to calculate damages.
Am I a pirate? Or a businessman who provided liquidity at a rationally determined market price, and enabled you to finally sell a copy and at least get a $1000?
Also, what amount did I demonstrate a willingness to pay? Certainly not $1000, right? It looks as if my willingness to pay was limited to the $10 of my own that I pitched in.
If I were to be sued, how should the damages be determined?
According to your "demonstrated willingness" concept for calculating damages, all 100 pirates demonstrated a willingness to pay $10, so the damages were $1000. But that's exactly what you got already. Everyone demonstrated willingness to pay $10, forked it over, and it was passed on to you.
So you see, this willingness to pay concept works very well with nonzero amounts too, in such a way that even pirates who charge money can come out smelling like roses.
You can argue about morality and the appropriateness of this behavior, and I'd probably agree with you on most points. The world you describe probably isn't the world I would prefer to live in, all things considered. But it's tricky argue that the bookseller is _economically_ worse off than they would have been without the pirate - as you just showed.
Granted, perhaps not _much_ above 0. But still evidently above 0.
edit: Even if your "consumption" is merely acquiring and storing (or even acquiring and immediately discarding)
Even if this is correct, you might have bought another book that was cheaper.
Case in point: Photoshop. It was pirated by everyone at home. But organizations could not pirate, so when they buy a photo editing package, it will be photoshop, as that what the employees know. If piracy at home was not an option, you'd see much more different photo packages at different price points in the market.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-11...
> Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_(19...